SteamBio enabling
sustainable carbon
for industry
SteamBio is a Horizon 2020 project funded by the
European Union research and innovation programme
under grant agreement No 636865
M
anrochem Limited is a
key member of SteamBio
an Horizon 2020 [H2020]
collaborative research
project, providing
technical management to a consortium
of eleven specialist commercial and
research organisations throughout
Europe located in the UK, Germany,
Spain and Scandinavia. The project
is funded by the European Union
under the Horizon 2020 Research and
Development Programme.
SteamBio H2020 project is financed
within the “bio economy” theme of
the current funding round with the
aim being to increase the value of
bio derived source materials that
are currently not being effectively
utilised. The ultimate aim is to replace
mineral derived coal, oil and gas with
renewable source ingredients; the
challenge being to replace on a “like for
like basis” i.e. provide material into the
supply chain that the existing supply
chain organisations will recognise.
Biochemical production currently
amounts to approximately $100 billion
per annum, which is an extremely
big number but is actually quite small
in comparison to the existing total
chemical market size of about $3
trillion.
Currently bio based supply to market is
mainly “1st generation”, which means
that biochemical source material
competes with available food supplies,
either directly by using say corn starch
or sugar or indirectly through land use.
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This is not sustainable long term and
has led to research and investment
into what is known as 2nd and 3rd
generation sources, which is where
the SteamBio project is positioned to
provide platform technologies within
the bio-energy and biochemical fields
of endeavour.
The bio-energy market is currently
the better developed arena within the
bio-industry field and is expanding.
From 2008 EU wood pellet use for
energy generation has increased from
2.5 million tons of oil equivalent
[MTOE] and is projected to reach
20 to 32 MTOE or as source
biomass approximately 50 to 80 million
metric tons by 2020 [source European
Biomass Association].
As the demand for bio-energy has
grown the fragility of the current
supply model has become apparent
which has a deleterious impact on 2nd
generation bio-chemicals production.
• Existing forestry resources in
Europe are insufficient to meet
market demand, resulting in
significant imports from North
America and other regions with
competition for supplies emerging
from East Asia and elsewhere.
Concerns have been expressed
on imported supplies with regards
ecological stress, environmental impact
of shipping around the globe and
competition from other use.
• There is abundant biomass resource
across Europe that is not currently
being used to supply the market. For
instance, it has been estimated that
there are potentially 100 MTOE of
agricultural residues alone. However,
these residues are not in a form that
can be readily accessed by a large
scale bio-economy.
So what does SteamBio hope to
achieve? The project has two
themes:
• Bio-energy – converting agricultural
residues into valuable fuel with
sufficiently high energy value to make
it worthwhile transporting the material
from its source location to its demand
location. It is this problem that has
prevented anything other than “local
solutions” being applied to the
source material with the limit to
exploitation being local demand is
insufficient for the total available local
material.
• Biochemical – all biomass is made up
of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen bound
together in structures that make the
material a solid rather than a liquid.
If the fundamental molecules of the
biomass can be re-arranged then the
source material can be converted into
a gas or a liquid. It is these future
gasses and liquids that the existing
supply chain recognises and wants.
SteamBio partners from industry
and academia have a common
purpose; to create a viable business
based on beneficiation of forestry
and agricultural residues and will
demonstrate economic viability in
different rural locations for the
recovery of usable bio-carbon from
indigenous forestry and farming
residues in tonnage quantities. In
SteamBio this bio-carbon will be
demonstrated as a coal replacement
for an industrial lime kiln and as
a carbon source in pilot scale biorefineries.